[Vaillant]

For money reasons, I can't afford a new PSU right now. Ripped out a 12 year old AT PSU 235Watt ( my main psu is 250 watts, thats why I need more lol )

I plugged both my optical drives into it, and I'd like to leave the disk drives off while they're not in use, to save electricity, and flip the switch on the old PSU to turn them on when needed...

The idea works, exept that windows rushes to find the missing drives when they're offline.

I need to know how to reconfigure windows to not look for its optical drives while they're offline, cause I know they're recognized when the power is on the old psu...

I hope you understand the problem,,, but more to the point I hope you can help me!

dont worry I am aware of the riskyness of what I'm doing, but I'm sure i can do it safely, if you just help me overt his speedbump

Thanks very much in advanced, your good pal Vaillant

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Seems a somewhat unorthodox way of solving your wattage deficit, but if it works and you fully accept that you do so at your own risk, what the hey. The only means to stop your system from "looking" for the drives that I can think of is to go into the bios and make the change there. It would seem simpler just to leave them powered on when the system is powered up.

[austin_o]

Seems a somewhat unorthodox way of solving your wattage deficit, but if it works and you fully accept that you do so at your own risk, what the hey. The only means to stop your system from "looking" for the drives that I can think of is to go into the bios and make the change there. It would seem simpler just to leave them powered on when the system is powered up.

[dsenette]

especially since optical drives only use electricity when they're in use....they don't sit there drawing electricity when they aren;t doing anything...i understand the concept of having them on the second psu...as when they are in use...they won't be drawing power from the under powered one thereby causing issues with the rest of the system...but...why not just turn the psu on when you turn the machine on...as i said...the optical drives will only draw power on bootup and when they are in use

[Vaillant]

But the 2nd psu is still on... doesnt it draw power itself? Or would it be neglegable?

[dsenette]

i know that people are trying to save electricity and all..but...jeebus...a pc doesnt use that much electricity under full load...let alone when it's not in use....the second psu would only be running it's fan unless you're using the drives...and that fan doesn't exactly have a giant draw...

if you really wanna see how much electricity your pc uses (money wise)....turn it off for a month and compare your electrical bill...i doubt you'd notice the difference

[Vaillant]

So if I get all of you right, the PSU only takes how much electricity it needs, IE if i put a 12 watt charge on the 2nd psu it'll only cost 12 watts ( plus the psu fan ) to run, not the full 235 ?

I really dont know much about how this stuff works, yet, so that's why I ask... I can build, unbuild, rebuild a computer, but how it actually works is another mystery for me.. Thanks.